During his feud with MJF, Chris Jericho was forced to take part in a “Labors of Jericho” concept which resulted in him facing Nick Gage in AEW. The match featured some controversy after a pizza cutter was used. This led to Dominos Pizza, who was advertising its product during the show, becoming upset.
Speaking on his “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, Jericho commented on working with Nick Gage in AEW, learning more about deathmatch wrestling at that time, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On working with Nick Gage in AEW: “Nick Gage, again, like, ‘I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s f**king insane.’ And then I asked Mox about him [and Moxley said] ‘He’s a teddy bear’ or something, whatever he said. And I spoke to him a couple of times, and he was super, super-respectful. And that goes a long way with me. Like I meet a lot of guys in the business, and as long as you have respect for the business, I’m cool with you. I don’t care what you do. And when I met him, he was so, so respectful and really was happy to be there, and was kind of, ‘Hey man, I just wanna tell you like, I’m a really big fan of yours and it’s really cool for me to be here. And it was like, he just loves wrestling.’ This is the path his wrestling took, doesn’t mean he’s any less of a wrestler.”
On learning more about deathmatch wrestling at that time: “I really started learning the psychology of deathmatch wrestling. What possesses these guys to do this? I’m not one of these guys to be like, [imitates Jim Cornette] ‘Well, that’s f**king bulls**t. That bulls**t stupid mudshow wrestling!’ I don’t look at it that way. I look at it, ‘Okay, there’s a market for this and these guys are really good at what they’re doing; how are they doing it?’
“So I really watched what he was doing. And I thought like, ‘S**t man, I’ll do it! I’ll do it.’ There was a time, there was a Chris Jericho time period where I would have went, ‘I would never get hit with a light tube. That’s stupid! That’s not wrestling, that’s bulls**t.’ And once again, take head out of ass, Jericho. Does it fit the story? Yes. Does it fit the story of the match? Yes. Let’s do it.”
On the Dominos controversy: “That was hilarious. So Nick wanted to do a pizza cutter, that’s one of his gimmicks. So right out the gate, he slices my arm with the pizza cutter, I still have a scar there. And that gets people like, ‘Holy s**t! This is real!’ And then during the commercial break, he starts slicing my forehead with the pizza cutter in picture-in-picture… So right when Nick is carving my forehead with the pizza cutter, there is a Dominos Pizza commercial where the guy is cutting the pizza with what? A pizza cutter! And apparently Dominos was furious.
“And this was, ‘AEW is gonna lose all their sponsors, and this is it! This is the end of the line!’ Nothing ever happened. I was like, if I was the Dominos guy, I would have filmed a Chris Jericho/Nick Gage commercial the next f**king day. I mean, it’s right there! Pizza cutters, Dominos, it goes hand in hand!”
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(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
